paper, where we begin
Powell's City of Books isn't just a place to take out-of-town guests.
It's a place that tells the story of who we are and where we live.
Portland was home to Beverly Cleary, a writer who found wonder in the ordinary lives of children growing up in our northeast neighborhoods.And it was home to Ursula K. Le Guin.,From Portland, she imagined whole worlds so we might better see our own.Their work is very different, but both pay attention to place, to its people, and to the environments they inhabit.For most of their lives, their words reached us on paper.In a time when the world moved at the pace of the page.Mail was delivered once a day, in earlier times twice. Less about solicitations, payment requests, or packages, the mail was an important way we kept in touch with our friends and family. It delivered important news–who got married, and when the baby was born, who is frail, who is grieving, and who is no longer speaking to that one cousin once removed.For news of the larger world, we had newspapers.Newspapers were printed with morning and evening editions, bringing us the day's headlines–politics, war, business, and crime, marriages, deaths, box scores, classifieds, editorials, comics, and tomorrow's weather.And books were havens, places to hide or to travel by– to places, both imagined and real. Some books became companions, their dog–eared pages and worn spines evidence of time spent together.The page gave us a shared sense of time in place.And that page came from the forest.Oregon's forests helped build one of the most significant timber and paper economies in the United States. Towns and cities grew alongside the rivers that powered the mills. Generations of workers turned trees into lumber and plywood, while the wood chips left behind became raw material for paper.But overharvesting strained our forests. Mills polluted our rivers. And as the industry changed, many mill towns hollowed out, leaving both the landscape and the community to bear the consequences.Today, paper is no longer the primary way we make sense of the world. Our screens do much of that now. But paper hasn't disappeared. Instead, it is doing something else.Paper wraps our take-out orders and cushions the contents of boxes delivered to our doors. Lightweight, pliable, and made from renewable fiber, it can replace some forms of packaging that are difficult to recycle. When paper is properly recovered, its fibers can be put to use again.Here in Oregon, we are reshaping the system that makes that possible. Under Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act, producers now share in funding the collection and processing of materials they put into circulation.It's not perfect.But it’s a start.And for us, standing at one end of that system, recycling is where we enter the story. What we put into the bin sends a signal downstream.We are paying attention.
collected thoughts
Time in Place, words as I remember them, from Adam Gopnik
It is art that puts Time in place. Art is the part of culture that depends most entirely on time, on knowing exactly when. The emotions it summons belong to the room they were made in, and to the city outside the room when they were made. Not a timeless experience of a general emotion, but a permanent experience of a particular moment.~ Adam Gopnik
🌲PAPER
Fiber is the resource.
For recycling, the question is, can it be recovered?
Paper is made of fibers that can only be recycled a handful of times.Each time it is recycled, those fibers get shorter until eventually there isn't enough useful fiber to recover.
That's why tissues and paper towels do not belong in the bin. Their fibers have reached the end of their useful life.
And just because they
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look alikedoesn't mean they all belong in the recycling bin.
Looks like paper.
Keeps food fresh.
Both have coatings that keep moisture out.
The Difference is the Design
Milk and broth cartons are made in layers, allowing the paper fibers to be separated and recovered during recycling.Most frozen-food packaging is made with coatings or combinations of materials that make the paper fibers difficult to separate and reuse.
Milk & Broth Cartons
YES
Frozen Food Packaging
NO
Not sure?
CHECK BEFORE YOU TOSS ->
Metro: Find a Recycler
why frozen-food boxes are different
Part of the answer:
A milk carton and a frozen food box seem to belong together; both are paper-based, and both hold food, but the similarity ends there.The dairy industry has long been tied to schools, public health, and regional identity. Milk, once a part of everyday life, came to symbolize trust. As consumption grew, so did the waste– and with it, the potential for that trust to erode.The dairy industry helped build a coordinated recycling system, working with packaging producers like Tetra Pak to ensure those cartons had a viable afterlife.A milk carton is designed to hold a perishable but relatively stable liquid: it needs protection from light and air, but not from extreme conditions.Its structure addresses those needs. Layers of paper provide rigidity, while thin films of plastic and sometimes aluminum create a protective barrier that delays disintegration. Paper fiber remains the dominant component. With the right infrastructure, those layers can be separated, and the fibers recovered. The packaging is complex but designed to come apart.Frozen food is a different species. Here, the promise is convenience: dinner, ready in under twenty minutes.To deliver that convenience, its packaging must endure freezer to microwave–moisture to heat. To perform under these conditions, it is often treated with polymer coatings or laminated layers that bond tightly to the paper substrate.These layers don’t separate easily. In the pulping process, water and agitation break down the paper into individual fibers. But polymer coatings resist water and remain bonded to some of those fibers. When the plastic is screened out, usable fiber goes with it.The frozen-food industry is also more fragmented. Unlike dairy, it spans everything from vegetables and pizza to ice cream and prepared meals. With so many different requirements, there is no simple path to recyclability.Until recently, the cost of disposal was largely absent from the producer's income statement. A company had to account for what it cost to make the package, fill it, ship it, and sell it–but not what it would cost to deal with that package once it was empty.Recycling is not driven solely by technical possibility; it is shaped by economics.Milk cartons, once processed, can yield fibers that retain value. Frozen food boxes tend to yield less recoverable fiber at a higher processing cost. In a market-driven system, the question is not simply can it be recycled but whether it makes sense to do so.Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act begins to shift that equation. Producers are increasingly responsible for the end-of-life impacts of their packaging. Materials that are harder to process may carry higher costs than materials that integrate more easily into the system.The difference between a milk carton and a frozen food box, then, is not just about materials.It reflects a system of choices- what industries prioritize, what the infrastructure supports, what costs are accounted for. and what we, as consumers, choose and demand.
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Diving Girl, A Portland Icon, repurposed.
Diving Girl adapted from Jantzen's historic Portland iconography– a small piece of our local visual history, repurposed here with appreciation.Jantzen Diving Girl ©/TM. are trademarks of their respective owner. Permission requested.
🧻 What kind of paper should we flush?
Toilet paper gets one use. Then we flush it.Americans use an estimated 141 rolls per person each year–about 28 pounds of toilet paper.Most toilet paper sold in the US is still made primarily from new wood fiber.It doesn't have to be.One small stepOregon makes one of the country's most environmentally preferable toilet papers:Aria toilet paper is made in Halsey, Oregon, by Georgia–Pacific from 100% recycled fiber, primarily recovered office and school paper. It earns A+ by NRDC's. Issue with Tissue scorecard.But it's difficult to find in an Oregon store.For now, Aria is available on Amazon.
🧻 Made in Oregon
In Halsey, Oregon, Georgia-Pacific employs hundreds of people making toilet paper and paper towels–including ARIA, a three-ply tissue made from 100% recycled fiber and packaged in recycled paper. ARIA is made exclusively at Halsey.The mill is growing. Georgia-Pacific announced a $150 million expansion to increase toilet-paper production.Georgia-Pacific is owned by Koch, Inc., a privately held company based in Wichita, Kansas.Oregon has the mill.
Oregon has the workers.
Oregon has the capacity to turn discarded paper into something nearly every household buys.The mill, however, is not locally owned.And one of the products it makes, ARIA, can be surprisingly difficult to find on an Oregon shelf.What toilet paper are Oregonians actually buying?And where does that money go?